GOLF MENTAL GAME COACHING TIPS BY DR. RICK SESSINGHAUS
Golf: My First Passion
Have you ever had that moment, that experience which kind of changed your life? In this case I mean a time when you became so passionate about something that your life just kind of flipped the switch. I’ve had a couple of those moments.
The first one came when I was 12 years old, I learned how to play golf. That first round of golf, I was there and I was hoping to hit that ball as hard as I could, and I was surprised how difficult the sport was. At that moment I became obsessed with golf mental game, I wanted to learn everything about it. I read all the books, all the magazines, I took lessons, I was watching it on TV all the time.
That passion, I felt alive, something I wanted to learn, something I wanted to get better at. That lasted for years for me. Played in college golf, professionally, and taught the game. It was awesome because I was so passionate about it and I wanted to learn for myself. Then as I became a coach I wanted to learn to help others, and to have that passion turn into a purpose to help other golfers with this frustrating game get better, get more enjoyment out of it.
The second thing that happened for me that kind of changed my course was giving a golf lesson to a business executive who, we were talking about the mental side of the game and he goes, “Rick, this would really apply to my day-to-day stress level because man, I have a lot of stress and a lot of pressure. And I’m finding I’m not enjoying work very much, and I’m finding that my performance is going down.” A light bulb went off and went, “Wow, you mean all this stuff that I’ve learned with golf performance can be in the business world.” I go, “Yes, it can be.”
So because I had already studied sport psychology, the golf mental game coaching, and I’ve studied different stress management techniques for my athletes, I go, “Of course, this transition is perfectly into the business world.” Now, about 10 years ago I became passionate about how I can help people deal with stress and pressure in a much more healthy way, and have them perform better. Now I have become obsessed, reading books, going to classes, having my own coaches, learning all these different techniques to now help people perform in their professional life to a higher level, getting more enjoyment out of it and reducing the stress.
Helping Others Manage Stress: My Second Passion
I became passionate about that, so I wanted to learn it for myself but also now to help others. Today I’m trying to think, you know, all of us have been passionate about something in our lives, how we’ve taken that passion and created a purpose behind it, how we had that passion and now be able to help others with it. When you align those two things, wow, life is great, because I want to continuously learn and I also want to now serve and help other people.
Today, let’s start thinking about what we’re passionate about, what we love learning, because there was a time in your professional career that you loved what you did, and we need to sometimes reconnect with that why and reconnect with how we are going to serve others with that. Let’s go back, what are those times where you had passion in life and how can we bring some of that passion back.
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